Thursday, May 04, 2017

10 uses for Amazon Echo in corporates

OK she’s been in my kitchen for months and I’m in the
habit of asking her to give me Radio 4 while I’m making my morning coffee.
Useful for music as well, especially when a tune comes into your head. But it’s
usually some question I have in my head or topic I want some detail on. My
wife’s getting used to hearing me talk to someone else while in another room. But what about the more formal use of Alexa in a business? Could
its frictionless, hands-free, natural language interface be of use
in the office environment?

1. Timer

How often have you been in a meeting that’s overrun? You can
set multiple timers on Alexa and she will light up and alarm you (softly) towards the end of each agenda item, say one minute before the next
agenda item. It could also be useful as a timer for speakers and presenters.
Ten minutes each? Set her up and she provides both visual and aural timed cues. I guess it would pay for itself at the end of the first meeting!

2.Calendar functionality

As Alexa can be integrated with your Google calendar, you
simply say, “Alexa, tell Quick Events to add go to see Tuesday
4th March at 11 a.m.". It prompts you until it has the complete scheduled
entry.

3. To do lists

Alexa will add things to a To Do list. This could be an
action list from a meeting or a personal list.

4. Calculator

Need numbers added, subtracted, multiplied, divided? You can read them in quickly and Alexa relpies quickly.

5. Queries and
questions

Quick questions or more detailed stuff from Wikipedia? Alexa
will oblige. You can also get stock quotes and even do banking through Capital
One. Expect others to follow.

6. Domain specific
knowledge

Product knowledge, company specific knowledge, Alexa can be
trained to respond to voice queries. Deliver a large range of text files and
Alexa can find the relevant one on request.

7. Training

You can provide text (text to speech) or your own
audio briefings. Indeed, you can have as many of these as you want. Or go one
step further with a quiz app that delivers audio training.

8. Music

Set yourself up for the day or have some ambient music on
while you work? Better still music that responds to your mood and requests,
Alexa is your DJ on demand.

9. Order sandwiches, Pizza or Uber

As Alexa is connected to several suppliers, you can get
these delivered to your business door. Saves all of that running out for
lunchtime sandwiches or pizza.

10. Control office
environment

You can control your office environment through the Smart
Home Skill API. This will work with existing smart home devices but there’s a
developer’s kit so that you can develop your own. It can control lights,
thermostats, security systems and so on.

Conclusion

As natural language AI applications progress, we will see
these business uses become more responsive and sophisticated. This is likely to
eat into that huge portion of management that the Harvard Business Review
identified as admin. Beyond this are applications that deliver services, knowledge
and training, specific to your organisation and you as an individual. Working on this as an application in training as we speak.